Although Nashville has long been considered ground zero for country music, California has produced some of the greatest artists and stylistic movements in the genre. There’s been hillbilly boogie pioneers Maddox Brothers and Rose, the Bakersfield Sound of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, country rock and cowpunk. The newest act to emerge as part of that hallowed Golden State history is the roots music band Front Country.
Hailing from the San Francisco Bay area and now based in Nashville, the progressive country and bluegrass band features singer-songwriter and guitarist Melody Walker, mandolinist Adam Roszkiewicz, guitarist Jacob Groopman, bassist Jeremy Darrow and violinist Leif Karlstrom. Front Country performs at SPACE on July 12.
“People don’t think of California as being country,” says Walker, calling from her West Coast hometown during a family visit. “For some reason, California never seems to get its due where country, bluegrass and roots music are concerned, even though there have been so many huge players in the scene. Haggard and Owens, come on!”
The acoustic quintet is touring behind their newly released sophomore album “Other Love Songs” (Organic Records). It’s a beautifully crafted outing that emphasizes strong songcraft, memorable melodies, the band’s exquisite musicianship and Walker’s powerful vocals.
The singer wrote eight of the 12 tracks. Thematically the album explores affairs of the heart.
“In the past several years, I had been challenging myself to write more relationship songs,” Walker says. “I was averse to that before. The love song is such a trope. It has been done so many times. But I couldn’t deny that people keep writing them and still have things to say. As I got older and had more relationships, I started to realize the subtleties. I wanted to write love songs from a different angle — write something I hadn’t heard before.”
Walker delivers a moving vocal performance on the beautifully layered rustic pop song “If Something Breaks.”
“On the surface it’s a song about a car and a road trip, but it’s a metaphor for a relationship,” she says. “It’s also a metaphor for a band. In relationships and in a band, you decide to make it work. When something arises, you deal with it and roll with the punches. A band is like a five-way marriage. Ultimately it’s a choice that you’re going to be a team and make things work.”
Against the throaty notes of an upright bass, picked mandolin and crying fiddle, Walker growls and soars on “I Don’t Wanna Die Angry.”
“I’ve been trying to get to the more primal feelings that we have in relationships, those vulnerable places we don’t talk about or even recognize,” she says about the inspiration for the song. “It’s about the kind of thoughts you have when you get in a fight. You think, ‘What if I got in a car crash right now and we just had this fight? Who wants to die angry?’ We’re all hungry for love. It’s really about honoring that hunger for acceptance and not holding on to anger, because life is too short.”
The album also includes “Storms are on the Ocean,” a cover of a song by the Carter Family, one of country’s iconic founding acts. Front Country gives the number a blues-funk groove.
“We’ve always been a band that rearranges traditional songs and tries to make them new and relevant again to a modern audience,” she says. “The song’s title is so rock ‘n’ roll sounding. The original is so sweet. I thought the subject matter could transpose into this rock and blues context and have a little more force to it.”
Walker was born in California and grew up listening to her musician father jam with his friends in a bluegrass band. She went on to study and perform world music. The other members of Front Country — who hail from Massachusetts, Virginia, New Mexico and North Carolina — had been playing in other genres including classical and jazz.
The future band members all eventually gravitated to San Francisco, where they met and began playing music.
“We had all played different kinds of music,” Walker recalls. “We came to the conclusion that we wanted to play our original version of American music. I had this yearning to come back to my own roots and play music I felt in my bones, something that was an authentic part of me that I had a cultural head start on. Having grown up around bluegrass music, it felt really natural to return to it.”
Front Country began informally in 2011. The members started playing a recurring jam session at a little cafe in the Mission District. In time, they moved on to a monthly Monday night residency playing bluegrass at a club called Amnesia. Those regular gigs allowed the group to hone its sound.
“There were probably 100 people at every one of those Monday night shows,” she says. “It was the five of us set up on the tiniest stage. But it was such a great way to test out the material. There was a huge mix of locals, hipsters from other cities and European and Asian tourists. We got the chance to see what material worked for a broad range of people who didn’t know us at all.”
The band entered bluegrass competitions at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and the RockyGrass Festival, taking first prize at each. Those wins boosted the band’s visibility and gave the musicians a big shot of confidence. They started to transition from a regional act to a national touring band.
“Those competitions absolutely put us on the map,” Walker says. “We were able to get a booking agent after that. Several other festivals took interest in us. That really kick-started our career. As a brand new band, it’s so daunting. It’s hard to get anyone to even return an email. Competitions are not a bad thing — you need some kind of accolade to get people to listen and to open their email.”
The band relocated to Nashville because it’s a hub that’s conducive to touring. There’s also a critical mass of industry folks and likeminded musicians in the city. Walker feels it’s a great time to be building a career.
“We’re lucky roots music has had a revival in the last 10 years or so,” she says. “It has been really fertile ground for a lot of new bands to get started. It’s been inspirational for us.”
Chrissie Dickinson is a freelance writer.
Twitter @chitribent
When: 7:30 p.m. July 12
Where: SPACE, 1245 Chicago Ave., Evanston
Tickets: $10-$18; (847) 556-9756 or www.evanstonspace.com
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